Energy contracts and its dispute resolution through arbitration

This dissertation examines the aspects of the energy contracts and the needs to implement the Arbitration on it, as an Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”), in MENA & North Africa, with an emphasizing on UAE Vis-à-vis the other GCC countries. And the Methodology I follow is the comparing and analyzing methods. The major challenge in this dissertation is that I did my best to proof the legal nature of the energy contracts, either as civil contracts or administrative contracts. However, the key thing here is to rely on the contained Set of rules and elements in such contract especially where the government is a party of such contracts, either by itself or through one if its members, to be regarded as a unique type of contracts has a unique features aim to achieve a public usefulness i.e. to provide a sustainability of providing sector with the need of power and water. I went through number of difficulties such as the lack of Arabic books, in addition to the too much of token time to get the Faculty of Law approval on the topic, when I was told that I have no right to latterly quote someone else words and I have to rewrite the author statement in my own words, which was over loaded work to do, with the consideration of the huge number of books I referred to. The research is in twofold dimension. The First chapter is designed to explain the general scopes and the natural legal type of the Energy contracts, its features, cons and pros, with concentrating on the administrative nature of it. In Chapter Two, and as consequences of the First Chapter, I discussed the dispute resolution of the Energy Contracts through the Arbitration as the Energy Contracts are administrative contracts, and I present the two scholars opinion who are agreed and disagree about the implementing of the Arbitration in the administrative contracts, in addition to number of recommendations which are made by me to intermediate by finding a middle opinion to accept the Arbitration in such contracts. Furthermore, in the end of the chapter a supposition is presented about the law which has to govern the dispute before the Arbitration Panel in the event of not being agreed about such contracts. I rely while I’m writing this dissertation on the international law i.e. treaties and conventions, constitution law (UAE and overseas), the statutes which have been published in the national gazette in both Egypt and GCC countries, in addition to the practical side of the related contracts in relation to the exiting big power sector projects. Nonetheless, as one of challenges I dealt with, the absence of the Arabic books which are specialized in my topic in general and/or the power sector specifically was a big challenge I have dealt with, and no doubt to say that the Arabic publications were and still very scant in this field. Eventually, one result is reached and proofed without any doubt, from the theoretical and the practical sides, which is the administrative nature of the Energy Contracts and the ability to resolve its disputes through the Arbitration. As a conclusion, I would like to extend my full appreciation to my professor Dr. Magdi Shouaib, my academic advisor who spent a lot of time and efforts to improve my researching skills